2020 was a disaster of a year with many unprecedented moments. Its unforeseen nature left us without a playbook on how to handle things. While there were much more pressing issues to address, COVID still left a major imprint on the entertainment world. We knew the time for awards season was coming and with the lack of cinematic content in 2020, many questioned what the right move was. 

I’ve already shared my opinion that the Oscars should be cancelled and if it weren’t for the television side of things, I would have argued the same for the Golden Globes. Those are just my thoughts and the awards will be handed out regardless of what I think. 

Today’s nominations, however, are an even stronger signal of why they shouldn’t. There’s no doubt that three female director nominations and the second ever nomination for an African American woman director are big cultural milestones. Regardless, I do question how impactful they’ll be considering the sparse year that 2020 was. These nominations only strengthen that. 

The fact that Hamilton got a Best Comedy/Musical nod shows that the Hollywood Foreign Press was grasping at straws when it came to what movies to nominate. Films like Promising Young Woman, Minari, and The Father have been buzzed about since Sundance and a major reason as to why they are still at the forefront is because nothing else got released. Possible awards hopefuls like Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch got pushed off to 2021. 

It’s not like a streaming hit like The Trial of the Chicago 7 isn’t deserving but it had no real competition to fight against. The pool of possible competition never really grew. What we really have with these nominations, is a slate of Sundance hopefuls and streaming releases that never got the chance to compete against other major studio releases. Every year, the movie release slate grows and grows. This year, it shrank and shrank and the films to get excited about never evolved. There are always so many unexpected hits which we knew nothing about at the start of the year. In 2020, that didn’t happen and the few films that did get seen, almost seemed like automatic bets due to the teams and buzz behind them and the fact that they actually decided to bear the proverbial 2020 storm. Their real triumph was facing the disaster of 2020 head on without any shame. 

I don’t want it to go unsaid that the teams behind these projects worked extremely hard and deserve their recognition. I just wish we could have seen how they held up in a normal year where the landscape wasn’t so empty. A much more diverse and impactful year would have added some much needed flare and surprise to this awards season.